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In PF1, you could read optimization guides and build a character who could bruteforce their way through anything of APL+4. You can just get your bonuses THAT high at character creation. In PF2, you can't break the curve at character creation, but you CAN leverage tactics in battle to do pretty amazing things. That is arguably a better place for the game to be in, but I could see why that change might feel jarring for folks.You could do this in PF1e because of the undisciplined and poorly managed way that Paizo released additional material. An evolutionary PF1.5e based up on learning from the mistakes of PF1e could solve this problem. I'm afraid that if Paizo doesn't learn from its mistake PF2e will be sooner or later end up in exactly the same place as PF1e in terms of the possibility of making adventure-breaking builds.
The problem has nothing to do with the intrinsic design of PF1e or PF2e. It has to do with the manner in which supplemental material is created and released.
The bolded bit simply isn't true. PF2's design has done a lot to curb the variance between characters numerically. It mostly just comes down to various ways bonus stacking has been reduced-- less bonus types, items only providing item bonuses, less feats like weapon focus or skill focus that just add more numbers. That plus less variance between characters of the same level does a lot to curb these issues. (It also curbs the enthusiasm of a lot of players who liked being able to layer on all those bonuses, of course, so it isn't without cost.)
And in general, PF1e's balance problems started with its core rulebook. A 5th level mounted paladin with spirited charge can just delete things from the battlefield with raw damage, and there's all sorts of stuff people have written on how bad core fighters, rogues, or monks had it in comparison to core wizards.
I don't think that takes away from the point that Paizo needs to be careful about how different content compares to each other, but it's not as simple as saying "less splat."
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The problem has nothing to do with the intrinsic design of PF1e or PF2e. It has to do with the manner in which supplemental material is created and released.The bolded bit simply isn't true. PF2's design has done a lot to curb the variance between characters numerically. It mostly just comes down to various ways bonus stacking has been reduced-- less bonus types, items only providing item bonuses, less feats like weapon focus or skill focus that just add more numbers. That plus less variance between characters of the same level does a lot to curb these issues. (It also curbs the enthusiasm of a lot of players who liked being able to layer on all those bonuses, of course, so it isn't without cost.)
And in general, PF1e's balance problems started with its core rulebook. A 5th level mounted paladin with spirited charge can just delete things from the battlefield with raw damage, and there's all sorts of stuff people have written on how bad core fighters, rogues, or monks had it in comparison to core wizards.
I don't think that takes away from the point that Paizo needs to be careful about how different...
I wasn't really thinking about intra-party "balance," as that's something I don't really care about, and I think that a focus on this is one of the factors that has contributed to a PF2e that I have little interest in playing.
My comments were more focused on how very high-powered PCs can trivialize scenarios. I think that's just as much a danger with PF2e as it was with PF1e. There's going to be a great demand for supplementary material providing all sorts of new and more powerful options for PCs, and Paizo is going to find it difficult not to cater to this demand. Plus, there's the interaction problem where the more material is released, the more possible combinations of features arise, and it's that much more difficult to assess the impact of new material on what's already come out.
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The problem has nothing to do with the intrinsic design of PF1e or PF2e. It has to do with the manner in which supplemental material is created and released.The bolded bit simply isn't true. PF2's design has done a lot to curb the variance between characters numerically. It mostly just comes down to various ways bonus stacking has been reduced-- less bonus types, items only providing item bonuses, less feats like weapon focus or skill focus that just add more numbers. That plus less variance between characters of the same level does a lot to curb these issues. (It also curbs the enthusiasm of a lot of players who liked being able to layer on all those bonuses, of course, so it isn't without cost.)
And in general, PF1e's balance problems started with its core rulebook. A 5th level mounted paladin with spirited charge can just delete things from the battlefield with raw damage, and there's all sorts of stuff people have written on how bad core fighters, rogues, or monks had it in comparison to core wizards.
I don't think that takes away from the point that Paizo needs to be careful about how different...
I wasn't really thinking about intra-party "balance," as that's something I don't really care about, and I think that a focus on this is one of the factors that has contributed to a PF2e that I have little interest in playing.
My comments were more focused on how very high-powered PCs can trivialize scenarios. I think that's just as much a danger with PF2e as it was with PF1e. There's going to be a great demand for supplementary material providing all sorts of new and more powerful options for PCs, and Paizo is going to find it difficult not to cater to this demand. Plus, there's the interaction problem where the more material is released, the more possible combinations of features arise, and it's that much more difficult to assess the impact of new material on what's already come out.
The two are very much related though. The CR system (and by extension, all adventure design) is only as reliable as you can gauge the power of any given PC. If APs are written for the least common denominator (players will little to no system mastery) then players with high system mastery are going to completely trivialize those encounters in PF1.
Tightening up the math means the CR system (or its level based PF2 equivalent) can be used to actually create encounters of a desired difficulty level with more reliability. That also makes it harder to build characters that break the designated difficulty level over their knee.
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Unbreakable games are far less fun though. Half the fun of any game is exploiting the crap out of it to roll face.
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Unbreakable games are far less fun though. Half the fun of any game is exploiting the crap out of it to roll face.
I strongly disagree. A lot of the fun in games is creating competent characters who succeed at what they set out to do, but that is not suddenly more fun if the game didn't intend that outcome. Indeed, games where such results are intended are usually quite a bit more flexible in how such outcomes can be reached, making for more diverse characters and more fun in general.
A well designed game with several strategies to achieve a 10/10 power level in a particular area is usually quite a bit more fun than one where most possible character options can only get 8/10 on power level, but there's this one broken, unintended, combo that takes it to 11/10.
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Unbreakable games are far less fun though. Half the fun of any game is exploiting the crap out of it to roll face.
Fun for who? And for how long? Every once in a while, but it gets so tedious to GM for that style of game every week. Theorycrafting it can be fun, but in practice it gets old fast. Then the GM does it back with a smart enemy and it is a TPK that causes players to quit.
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Unbreakable games are far less fun though. Half the fun of any game is exploiting the crap out of it to roll face.Fun for who? And for how long? Every once in a while, but it gets so tedious to GM for that style of game every week. Theorycrafting it can be fun, but in practice it gets old fast. Then the GM does it back with a smart enemy and it is a TPK that causes players to quit.
Or even worse, the rest of the party quit beforehand becasue that one player will just roll over every encounter so there's no point in playing.
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Unbreakable games are far less fun though. Half the fun of any game is exploiting the crap out of it to roll face.
I remember back in 3rd edition D&D, we had a player that skewed the game much higher because of his rule exploitation. We all talked to him about making the game less fun for everyone else, how people were having to play second fiddle to his Sorcerer/Archmage/Paladin who just couldn't be stopped.
I remember a new player showing up to the party and saying, "Why don't you just kill his character?" and the sad realization that they really couldn't DO anything without him. The game just didn't function with or without him. And so then we stopped playing with him, and that sucks.
If breaking a game over my knee is the fun of the game, then it's not a fun game.
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A little more detail on the +5 weapon thing from my own stream viewing, and why that specific question was useful for them.
They needed to determine how attached people were to having weapons go all the way up to +5 so they could see about lowering it. Much like wands having charges, they needed to see how sacred that cow was before they slaughtered it. Because 75% of people didn't care or didn't want them to go that high, they can now look at lowering the potency rune bonus to +3, for example.
Reducing the potency rune bonus to +3 opens up a lot of design space for them to play around with. That means you can get an additional +2 bonus to hit from skill, and perhaps make the weapon quality the only thing that affects accuracy instead of potency runes since the numbers now line up better. (I would be SUPER stoked if they made that latter change.)
It also means that 2 of your dice could come from skill and you'd still wind up at the same place at level 20. While this won't satisfy the "No plus weapon at all," I think having half your damage be from having an amazing sword and half from your skill seems like a more appealing balance point. Personally, I like that your +3 legendary weapon would FEEL legendary. I think Marvel's Thor is a decent place to peg my thoughts on the matter-- you should be godly across the board, but using your godly strength to leverage your godly hammer is how you kick the most butt.
"Are you Thor, the god of hammers?"
The problem is that no weapon will feel legendary for long when the standards of the game are built around the assumption that you have such a weapon at a certain point.
If my Fighter has a +3 Weapon, and so does the Rogue, and so does the Cleric, and even the Elven Wizard is firing off a shot from her +3 bow every round , and every enemy I fight is hitting like they have a +3 weapon, then my +3 weapon is nothing special or remarkable.
A +3 weapon simply becomes the baseline tool that is required to do your job correctly. It's as legendary as a plumber's trusty toilet auger.
The things that will make your weapon stand out are the less generic abilities that can be put on it.
Thor's hammer is legendary because it gives him the ability to fly and always returns to his hand and no one can lift it except for the worthy.
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Unbreakable games are far less fun though. Half the fun of any game is exploiting the crap out of it to roll face.
It's only "fun" if all the players at the table play that way. The moment there's any person who does not approach the game that way at the table, there's no fun to be had anymore, because the munchkin exploiter player(s) will make others ask themselves why are they participating in this exercise in uselessness anyway, while the munchkin player will wonder why she's stuck with a bunch of people who drag her down.
The crazy gap between how PCs ran by full-time minmaxers and PCs ran by people who don't spend their free time combing PRD for options or reading CharOp boards so that they can make the Slayer + goz mask + eversmoking bottle combo is the singular biggest flaw of PF1. If you enjoy that flaw (or, perish the thought, find solace in the elitism which being a part of the min-maxer crowd provides some folks with), PF1 is here to stay and you can continue twinking out your build and rolling face.
If your group plays that way - all the power to you, but you need to recognize the issue PF1's wacky power level discrepancies causes in getting new players into the game and expanding the hobby as a whole. The "how easy it is to get new players in" factor was, IMHO, one of the core elements behind 5E blowing PF1 out of the water so, well, easily.
In PF1, you could read optimization guides and build a character who could bruteforce their way through anything of APL+4. You can just get your bonuses THAT high at character creation. In PF2, you can't break the curve at character creation, but you CAN leverage tactics in battle to do pretty amazing things. That is arguably a better place for the game to be in, but I could see why that change might feel jarring for folks.You could do this in PF1e because of the undisciplined and poorly managed way that Paizo released additional material. An evolutionary PF1.5e based up on learning from the mistakes of PF1e could solve this problem. I'm afraid that if Paizo doesn't learn from its mistake PF2e will be sooner or later end up in exactly the same place as PF1e in terms of the possibility of making adventure-breaking builds.
The problem has nothing to do with the intrinsic design of PF1e or PF2e. It has to do with the manner in which supplemental material is created and released.
Rarity is a huge step in this regard. But to be fair the one thing everyone likes the most about PF1 is that there are so many build choices. So I'm very much pleased if they continue the same release schedule they had in PF1.
I'm already chomping at the bit to get more content.
A little more detail on the +5 weapon thing from my own stream viewing, and why that specific question was useful for them.
They needed to determine how attached people were to having weapons go all the way up to +5 so they could see about lowering it. Much like wands having charges, they needed to see how sacred that cow was before they slaughtered it. Because 75% of people didn't care or didn't want them to go that high, they can now look at lowering the potency rune bonus to +3, for example.
Reducing the potency rune bonus to +3 opens up a lot of design space for them to play around with. That means you can get an additional +2 bonus to hit from skill, and perhaps make the weapon quality the only thing that affects accuracy instead of potency runes since the numbers now line up better. (I would be SUPER stoked if they made that latter change.)
It also means that 2 of your dice could come from skill and you'd still wind up at the same place at level 20. While this won't satisfy the "No plus weapon at all," I think having half your damage be from having an amazing sword and half from your skill seems like a more appealing balance point. Personally, I like that your +3 legendary weapon would FEEL legendary. I think Marvel's Thor is a decent place to peg my thoughts on the matter-- you should be godly across the board, but using your godly strength to leverage your godly hammer is how you kick the most butt.
"Are you Thor, the god of hammers?"
The problem is that no weapon will feel legendary for long when the standards of the game are built around the assumption that you have such a weapon at a certain point.
If my Fighter has a +3 Weapon, and so does the Rogue, and so does the Cleric, and even the Elven Wizard is firing off a shot from her +3 bow every round , and every enemy I fight is hitting like they have a +3 weapon, then my +3 weapon is nothing special or remarkable.
A +3 weapon simply becomes the baseline tool that is required to do your job...
I knew I was setting myself up for a Ragnaraok reference there. ;)
Thor's hammer is also legendary because he can charge it up with magical energy and swing it so hard and fast he cracks the armor of a celestial with it. At the end of the day, the most intuitive magic you can put on a hammer is to make it hit harder. Having other powers are cool af, but if your weapon can't be enchanted to be better at killing people, it feels really weird.
And once your weapon becomes better at doing that, it is gonna become part of the mathematical assumptions the game makes. The two feel rather unavoidable. Some folks are cool with that because magic weapons should feel like good weapons to them, and others are not for the reasons you mention. Neither side is objectively more right; it is really just personal taste.
Aside from legacy though, the +weapon crowd has one big edge on their side of the argument: it is easier to remove +weapons than add them. We have already seen a couple fan made automatic bonus progressions for the playtest. I threw together one to prove a point in like 20 minutes, Edwir has a much more sophisticated and ambitious one.
One last note:
The Green Lantern Corp are nothing without their rings, of which there are thousands to let them just do their job, but their rings are still some of the most interesting weapons in fiction.
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IMHO the weapon / skill dichotomy can be solved by having both magic & skill increased accuracy and damage increases but making them non stackable, you take the highest.
So you build for whichever option takes the least resources?
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IMHO the weapon / skill dichotomy can be solved by having both magic & skill increased accuracy and damage increases but making them non stackable, you take the highest.So you build for whichever option takes the least resources?
Inherent bonuses should be a bit lesser so having magic bonuses is an advantage just not overwhelmingly so.
but the baseline must be the non magical bonuses, so magical bonuses are extra icing and not the default assumption (also magical weapons with accuracy/damage bonuses should be at least uncommon)Inherent bonuses should be a bit lesser so having magic bonuses is an advantage just not overwhelmingly so.IMHO the weapon / skill dichotomy can be solved by having both magic & skill increased accuracy and damage increases but making them non stackable, you take the highest.So you build for whichever option takes the least resources?
Agreeing with baseline, firmly disagreeing with uncommon (not that I think it would fly at all here). I want my weapon to be better at weaponing (having better attack & damage), rather than baseline function being something else.
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Thor's hammer is also legendary because he can charge it up with magical energy and swing it so hard and fast he cracks the armor of a celestial with it. At the end of the day, the most intuitive magic you can put on a hammer is to make it hit harder. Having other powers are cool af, but if your weapon can't be enchanted to be better at killing people, it feels really weird.
And once your weapon becomes better at doing that, it is gonna become part of the mathematical assumptions the game makes. The two feel rather unavoidable. Some folks are cool with that because magic weapons should feel like good weapons to them, and others are not for the reasons you mention. Neither side is objectively more right; it is really just personal taste.
You can't make +X bonuses mandatory under the math, especially in a system where the math is so tight, and then leave the distribution of them at the discretion of the GM or a purchasing option with no indication that a +X is more important than any other particular magic item.
It creates traps for both GMs and players to fall into.
Agreeing with baseline, firmly disagreeing with uncommon (not that I think it would fly at all here). I want my weapon to be better at weaponing (having better attack & damage), rather than baseline function being something else.but the baseline must be the non magical bonuses, so magical bonuses are extra icing and not the default assumption (also magical weapons with accuracy/damage bonuses should be at least uncommon)Inherent bonuses should be a bit lesser so having magic bonuses is an advantage just not overwhelmingly so.IMHO the weapon / skill dichotomy can be solved by having both magic & skill increased accuracy and damage increases but making them non stackable, you take the highest.So you build for whichever option takes the least resources?
I liked the earlier idea of tying it to level with proficiency as a cap.
For the curve I would imagine working well:
Fighters tier weapon users (Those that scale to Legendary) wouldn't ever need potency runes on their primary weapon group, just a quality weapon, so a Fighter with a Legendary Quality sword would be just as effective as with a +5 sword.
Their secondary weapon groups should need a +1 potency to keep up.
Ranger tier weapon users (Those that scale to Master) would be in the same group as the secondary fighter weapons, a +1 to reach full effectiveness with their primary group. And a +2 for secondary groups.
Rogue tier weapon users (Those that scale to Expert) would need a +2 to reach full effect for their primary weapons, and +3 in secondary weapons.
Caster tier weapon users (Those that scale to Trained) would need a +3 in their weapon groups to reach full effectiveness.
Character options like the racial ones would be balanced on the curve of rogue tier, so you can become an expert with investment.
Potency runes aren't 1-5 but have a quality, Expert, Master, Legendary.
With this setup your purely martial characters can function without potency, but more magically oriented characters need to invest more magic to keep up.
Thor's hammer is also legendary because he can charge it up with magical energy and swing it so hard and fast he cracks the armor of a celestial with it. At the end of the day, the most intuitive magic you can put on a hammer is to make it hit harder. Having other powers are cool af, but if your weapon can't be enchanted to be better at killing people, it feels really weird.
And once your weapon becomes better at doing that, it is gonna become part of the mathematical assumptions the game makes. The two feel rather unavoidable. Some folks are cool with that because magic weapons should feel like good weapons to them, and others are not for the reasons you mention. Neither side is objectively more right; it is really just personal taste.
You can't make +X bonuses mandatory under the math, especially in a system where the math is so tight, and then leave the distribution of them at the discretion of the GM or a purchasing option with no indication that a +X is more important than any other particular magic item.
It creates traps for both GMs and players to fall into.
Actually, the "Coveted Objects" sidebar on page 395 does explicitly say the best magic weapons and armor a character can afford are staples of the game. I think it could probably be spelled out more clearly than it currently is, and maybe put somewhere a little more front and center, but there IS an indication that these items are assumed.
Then we reach nowhere, every martial will be obligated to get magical (as in accuracy/damage bonuses) weapons to stay competitiveAgreeing with baseline, firmly disagreeing with uncommon (not that I think it would fly at all here). I want my weapon to be better at weaponing (having better attack & damage), rather than baseline function being something else.but the baseline must be the non magical bonuses, so magical bonuses are extra icing and not the default assumption (also magical weapons with accuracy/damage bonuses should be at least uncommon)Inherent bonuses should be a bit lesser so having magic bonuses is an advantage just not overwhelmingly so.IMHO the weapon / skill dichotomy can be solved by having both magic & skill increased accuracy and damage increases but making them non stackable, you take the highest.So you build for whichever option takes the least resources?
Numerical bonuses are the best and will probably always be the best in this type of RPG. And frankly, some of us like getting all those +1s (like in PF1). The problem is that non-numerical enchantments are overpriced and just plain bad and thus not competitive at all. Having an inherent bonus that is a little lower than magic one at the time you can get both means that sometimes I'll try to take some other magic item that is not the biggest bonus. Having inherent bonus as a baseline for optimization/monster math means I'm even further not punished for getting an interesting item instead of a +.